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Madrigali. Six 'Fire Songs' on Italian Renaissance Poems

Introduction

In his choral cycle Madrigali: Six ‘Fire Songs’ on Italian Renaissance Poems for a cappella chorus (1987), Lauridsen expropriates techniques favoured by sixteenth-century Italian madrigalists to paint a very different emotional landscape from that of Lux aeterna. Instead of light, hope and serenity, the Madrigali are haunted by darkness, yearning and, at times, profound despair. As in Lux aeterna, Lauridsen employs the technique of using a single chord – a sonority that he has dubbed the ‘fire-chord’ (a B flat minor triad with a scorching added C) – to unify the entire score and symbolize its fevered mood. As the composer has testified: ‘The choral masterpieces of the High Renaissance, especially the madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, provided the inspiration for my own Madrigali. Italian love poems of that era have constituted a rich lyric source for many composers, and while reading them I became increasingly intrigued by the symbolic image of flames, burning and fire that recurred within this context.’

Derived from what the composer has identified as the ‘single, primal sonority’ of the ‘fire-chord’, the Madrigali relate an inner narrative of evanescent hope and erotic obsession. Some of the techniques that the composer has assimilated from Monteverdi and his contemporaries include a pervasive modality, bold harmonic juxtapositions, word-painting through melodic and harmonic means; intricate counterpoint, and Augenmusik – literally ‘eye-music’. (Used extensively by Marenzio and other sixteenth-century madrigal composers, the practice of Augenmusik exploits the purely graphic appearance of the score to convey a musical meaning to the performer’s gaze.) Cast as an extended Bogenform (‘arch form’), the Madrigali are unified through the use of recurring thematic and harmonic material, especially between movements one and six, and two and five. The capstone and climax of the cycle is reached in the fourth madrigal, Io piango (‘I weep’), a lament that reaches a shattering climax on a complex chord of harrowing dissonance. The final movement, Se per havervi, oime (‘If, alas, when I gave you my heart’), provides the Madrigali with an ambivalent conclusion; after the emotional immolation so movingly portrayed in the preceding madrigals, Lauridsen sagely eschews a facile resolution by ending the cycle on a subdued but insistently unresolved dissonance. As the composer once remarked, ‘these settings are passionate, earthy, dramatic – red wine music’.

Recordings

'Exquisitely sung by Polyphony with strong support from the Britten Sinfonia under Stephen Layton' (The Observer)'The music has freshness and an affecting emotional pull to it that explains its popularity with singers and audiences across the pond. Stephen Layton ...» More

Alas, where is the beautiful face? Behold, it hides. Woe’s me, where is my sun? Alas, what veil drapes itself and renders the heavens dark? Woe’s me, that I call and see it; it doesn’t respond. Oh, if your sails have auspicious winds, my dearest sweet, and if you change your hair and features late, if the Lord of Delos hides grace and valour in your beautiful bosom, hear my sighs and give them place to turn unjust disdain into love, and may your pity conquer hardships. See how I burn and how I am consumed by fire; what better reason, what greater sign than I, a temple of faithful life and love!

When I am farthest from your beautiful eyes that made me change my wishes and my ways, the flame grows and leads me to my death; and you, who for my fate could restrain the sweet flame, deny me the flame that inflames me.

O love, I feel my soul return to the fire where I rejoiced and more than ever desire to burn. I burn and in bright flames I feed my miserable heart; the more it flames the more my loving grows, for all my sorrows are born of the fire where I rejoiced and more than ever desire to burn.

I weep, for the grief causes weeping, since I can find no other remedy for my fire. So trapped by Love am I that ever I lie in torment but the more I weep the less pain I feel. What cruel, unheard-of fate that silence gives me death and weeping life!

Eyes serene and clear, you inflame me, but my heart must find pleasure, not sorrow, in the fire. Words sweet and dear, you wound me, but my breast must find pleasure, not sorrow, in the wound. O miracle of love! The soul that is all fire and blood, melts yet feels no sorrow, dies yet does not languish.

If, alas, when I gave you my heart, there was born in me that passion, cruel Lady, which burns me everywhere so that I am all aflame, and if, loving you, bitter torment makes me die of sorrow, wretched me! What shall I do without you who are my every joy?